What does this quote mean - by Leo Tolstoy?

Question

"When the life of people is unmoral and their relations are not based on love, but on egoism, then all technical improvements, the increase of man's power over nature, steam, electricity, the telegraph, every machine, gunpowder, and dynamite, produce the impression of dangerous toys placed in the hands of children."

Answer 1

This reminds me of a quotation which is quite famous among Sri Lankan people. What will happen when a monkey is mistakenly given a knife.

Your quotation means the same. The monkey doesn't understand and know the uses of a knife and the way to use it. It even doesn't know how dangerous it could be and what harm it could bring. It's the same thing when a kid gets his hands on a dangerous toy. It doesn't know the danger of it. So it could harm the kid as well as the people around him.

So when people forget the meaning of love and harmony, the scientific inventions could turn against them. It means that those inventions will be used for the destruction of the same human who invented it. This is what we are experiencing here in Sri Lanka. Every other day we get up with cries of our own brothers in the north.  Every news broadcast begins with tens and hundreds of deaths. It is all because people have forgotten that we are all humans living under one sun. That's why Leo Tolstoy is a great author.

Answer 2

Basically, put any technological marvel in the hands of someone whose egomania out-weighs their propensity towards goodness/love and it becomes less a marvel and more, as the quote says, like giving a dangerous toy to a child.

So for instance, in the hands of a ruler with the desire for progress to help his fellow man, the nuclear age is a great milestone in history, but in the hands of a man who only wishes to increase his arsenal against his neighboring enemies it's like placing a dangerous toy in the hands of a child.

And none of that above was aimed at Iran.

......Not much.

Answer 3

The end is near basically.  Pride and arrogance will dominate.

Answer 4

I'm not sure how to break it down any further  than it is - when people's relationships with each other are not based on love, but rather on egoism, or egotism, or power-seeking, I think he would include all those as egoism, then any technical skills or advances we have are like dangerous toys in the hands of children.

Simply that without the decency and restraint that love gives us, we would be tempted to use our new toys as weapons and be reckless with them, which is certainly true.  You wouldn't give some thoughtless kid a chainsaw to play with - same thing.

Answer 5

Children are often moved by ego to do the things they do -- fight, refuse to share, disobey parents, etc.

If adults are moved only by ego then they will behave like children, only with bigger, more dangerous toys.

A moral life based on love means choosing what is best for all, not just on what a person wants "right now", is critical to living well.